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HDD boots in one PC, not in another

Greetings!

The situation is as follows:

There is a 200GB WD ATA-133 HDD. It has XP sp2 installed. It still works just fine when in my standard PC (let's call it PC1). However, in PC2 it just does not load. It is recognized by the BIOS, as well as its full 200GB size. I have formatted a new 40GB HDD in PC2 and it has since worked fine. I have updated PC2's BIOS to its latest version, just in case. I have not tried another HDD with an already installed OS on it. The 200GB HDD would be a primary master in both cases.

There is a 200GB WD ATA-133 HDD. It has XP sp2 installed. It still works just fine when in my standard PC (let's call it PC1). However, in PC2 it just does not load. It is recognized by the BIOS, as well as its full 200GB size. I have formatted a new 40GB HDD in PC2 and it has since worked fine. I have updated PC2's BIOS to its latest version, just in case. I have not tried another HDD with an already installed OS on it. The 200GB HDD would be a primary master in both cases.

Any suggestions?

With respect.

EQ

Are you saying that you are trying to move a hard drive with an OS on it to another machine, and that it won't boot on the second machine?

If you are, that is what you would expect. XP looks for the hardware that it was originally configured for, and if there are major changes, it can just choke. Are you getting an error message-like IRQL_not_less_or_equal?

If you move a hard drive with an OS on it to another machine, expect to have to do a repair install at the least, and a reformat and clean install most likely.

That is what I feared. I never heard that explicitly, but my experience has always hovered around that. Certainly no problem with the reinstall, and I love the feel of a freshly installed OS, but naturally a bit of a drag. Glad that it's at least something that's 'with the program' and not a defect. Muchly appreciated.